[ChadMoran]

I launched a technical feature on Amazon's retail platform that is responsible for 9 figures worth of revenue. When I launched it, it had no infrastructure. It was a collection of small changes across every core platform (Detail Page, Cart, Checkout, etc).

At first people were like "Well, you didn't do much" but when they saw the value things changed drastically. It's a bit of marketing you have to do to help bring people along.

Often perceived impact is correlated with complexity, sadly.

[pinkmuffinere]

Coincidentally similar story, but with a different end -- I eliminated a test station from the final assembly line for Astro (Amazon's home robot), because there were no unique failure modes that the test station could catch (we collected ideas, and then went through and analyzed every failure mode suggested, they would all be detected by other stations). I think we estimated that was ~$1 million savings, in addition to simplifying the workflow and reducing time spent to do final testing. I brought this up with my manager when pushing for a promo, but he told me "somebody else made that value, you just stopped it from being thrown away", lol. Maybe I should have pushed harder, but I definitely felt underappreciated, and am still not sure if I could have gotten better recognition for it.

Don't feel sorry for me though, they still paid me well enough, and I'm happily doing my own stuff now :)

[jtbaker]

How do you ascribe a revenue number like that based on one collection of changes in a huge system? Presumably there were a bunch of other features being released around the same time as it. Was there a lot of A/B testing around it?

[ChadMoran]

Amazon uses a complicated process called "attributed OPS". Meaning you may not be directly responsible for but you contributed in some way.

[tonyedgecombe]

Doesn’t matter, @ChadMoran is already on the fast track whilst you are on a pip.

[ChadMoran]

Hah, well I've done something right. They've let me stay here almost 15 years.